Lung-cancer survivor to sing at another inaugural

Singing for the president of the United States at his inauguration is one thing.

But singing for the president of the United States at his inauguration after two-thirds of your lung has been removed?

Now that's a story.

Bill Clinton had just been elected president back in January 1993 when Resa Hempfling happened to be playing the Blues Alley supperclub in Georgetown, singing standards like "It Had to Be You."

Between sets, a man walked up: "Do you have any interest in singing at the inauguration?"

He may as well have been asking if the pope was Catholic.

He told her he was from The President's Own, a Marine band that plays the White House. A few weeks later, back at her house in Newport Beach, Hempfling got a phone call from the inaugural committee.

So it was real.

But why her?

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Resa grew up on in Maryland, the daughter of a retired general.

And her mom, Beatrice? She was the jewel on my father's arm.

Resa was a shy girl, but the stage beckoned. She enrolled in NYU School of the Arts and scored some roles in off-Broadway musicals. Nearing graduation, she auditioned for a band called New Dawn.

She didn't consider herself a singer. I was an actress who sang.

New Dawn's members didn't care what she was; they liked her. And for the next four years Resa found herself singing Top 40 covers at hotels across the country.

In 1980 she created a one-woman show, singing everything from show tunes to pop, and took it to Palm Springs supper clubs and swanky nightclubs like the rotating Top of the Wheel at Harvey's casino in Tahoe.

Her set list called for light jazz that night in '93 when a member of the White House band fell for her at Blues Alley.

So what did he see in her that gave him the idea she was inauguration material?

"I haven't the vaguest idea," she says.

But there was no time for questions. There was shopping to be done.

Resa would be singing at five parties. The way she saw it, she needed five beaded gowns.

The first party was at a Virginia plantation for Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper. That's where she met Clinton and decided he was the most charismatic man she had ever met, including her husband.

At the Michigan Dinner Dance, Clinton came onstage to play the sax for one of her songs.

Then things got even more surreal. At an intimate celebrity welcome party at The Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue, she, Resa Hempfling, sang for legends Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick, the woman whose records she grew up listening to.

Not only did she sing for Dionne. She sang a Dionne song for Dionne. What's more, the pop star told Resa she liked her rendition.

"You try to be very cool, calm and collected but you feel like a 12-year-old inside," Resa says.

Streisand also thanked Resa for singing for her.

"I said something brilliant back, like, 'You're welcome.'"

When it was all over, she flew back to Newport Beach, and reality.

So she was surprised when, four years later, she got another call. Would she sing for Clinton's second inauguration?

This time she only needed to buy two gowns.

She would entertain at the literary welcome party and the Indiana Ball at the Museum of Natural History, where Clinton actually remembered her "or at least he said he did."

"Resa, it's so nice to see you back," she recalls him saying as he took her white-gloved hand in his.

"And I said, 'Mr. President, it's great to see you back too.'"

Ask Resa if she voted for Clinton, though, and she won't tell.

"I'm a patriot," she says. "It doesn't matter if the president is Republican or Democrat." Once elected, "he's my guy."

Four years later, the Democrats were out, the Republicans were in. Did they share entertainers?

Apparently so.

This time the inaugural committee found Resa in Laguna Niguel where she had moved.

She sang at the Pennsylvania Ball where newly elected President George W. Bush danced to one of her ballads. She thinks it might have been "Moon River."

Four years later, as another election unfolded, the thought crossed her mind that she wasn't getting any younger.

I wonder if they still like me?

They did.

"They still wanted me for some reason," she says in awe, sounding a bit like Sally Fields famously collecting her Oscar.

Four years after that, Obama was on the cusp of becoming the first African American president of the United States and the national mood was practically giddy. Did she dare dream she could be part of this historic moment?

The call did indeed come in, like clockwork.

But, this time, it was heartbreaking.

Resa was in the midst of some medical tests. X-rays showed a spot on her lung. Could she call them back? Then tests confirmed the worst: lung cancer.

She had never smoked; she's a self-proclaimed gym rat. She called the inaugural committee back with the news and then went into battle.

We have three lobes in our right lung; surgeons removed two of those three from Resa's.

Only several months later, she was booking her comeback show with an eight-piece band at the Thunderbird Country Club in Palm Springs.

"Boy was I sweating that night," she remembers.

She hadn't rehearsed and wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth. But if she was going to go for it, she was going to go big. The first song on her set list: "New York, New York."

As she sang the notes, the adrenaline kicked in.

"I could hear the guys in the band behind me: 'Yeah! Yeah! You got it!' And then I knew I was home free."

But surely, Resa thought, the inaugural committee had crossed her off their list, figuring the cancer got her.

So this past August, when she got another call, she was "flabbergasted." They wanted her to sing for the Georgia Society Ball at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; this time classic rock.

It was off to Nordstrom, where Resa found a white harem pantsuit, a la Justin Bieber.

A few days ago, she got another thrill. For the first time, she is going to be on the bill for the Monday night ball with another singer: Gladys Knight.

"Why me?" Resa asks.

"I keep waiting for someone to say, 'Wait, you're not really a singer, are you?'"